Tanks need more than just TankBusters

[PyurBlue]

I mean, I kinda even do. Or rather in the context of FFXIV I do, it's kinda "its thing". It's what you'd tell people about how FFXIV differs, "it's a ballet for 8-14 minutes", like you tell people about GW2's open world focus, that kind of stuff.

That's fair. It's certainly part of FF14's content design, but for me it was never a selling point. I know that there are different opinions on this though.

you can very much have "For these 20 seconds, the boss just autoattacks + does some form of raid damage on each autoattack" as a rigid step in the raid, but at the same time what the boss will do there you do not know.

There are many, many ways to add randomness to the game. At one extreme you can have a set sequence of events with small variations on a fixed schedule. At 1 minute the boss will do X or Y, you don't know which, but you do know that something will happen at 1 minute. The other extreme is random without constraint. The boss is completely unpredictable and no two instances of the boss fight will ever be the same. What I want are encounters where I can use skills and knowledge that I've built up to figure out solutions then and there instead of having a script and sticking to it.

A fixed boss pattern with random events is better than one with no variation but it's still going to be more of a memory test I think. Something is going to happen at 1 minute and then again at two minutes, so you memorize plan A and plan B and pick one accordingly. I'd rather not know when anything is going to happen and have to come up with my plan in real time.

What’s the appeal of the big damage happening at random times?

It creates a need to concentrate on what you're doing. Healing/Mitigating in a lot of content can be done on autopilot because you know exactly when there is going to be damage, and how much. The most interesting part of healing/mitigating for me is when people make mistakes because it's random. It's also the only way to even remotely stress healers with the amount of heals available. Even when blind in new fights it's pretty safe to use a lot of your heals on cooldown. Abilities like Assize and Earthly Star can be thrown out without regard for incoming damage and you're fine most of the time. The same for party mitigation like Veil and Shake. I find it a bit boring. It's less true in higher difficulties, but in that case you just need to memorize the few times that you need to hold the ability and then just do that.

It feels like it would be similar to when you’re progging a fight and don’t remember when the busters happen, and just press your short mit + one other thing every time you notice that the cast bar is happening (or whatever the tell is for the damage).

If the castbar isn't totally predictable this can at least create an element of on the fly mitigation management. It can also lead to natural tank swapping instead of the forced tank swapping we get through things like statuses.

It feels to me like tankbusters are fun when they’re actually part of mechanics, which makes them a lot more interesting than the usual “tanks stand north and press a couple mits, the rest of the party standa south and just hits the boss.” And IMO the best ones are mechanics for the whole party (like EX1 Mountain Fire, or DSR Hallowed Wing) so they’re not just standing around.

TB's with additional mechanics beyond "press mit to live" are fun. I think they would also benefit from being less predictable.

But it is still planned. You might have 2 different routes depending on what comes first, but that is still a plan. No matter what a fight does, you need to have the resources available to deal with it. If the boss tank busters you several times in a row, you are going to die as you run out of defensives, so even in designing fights, there is a level of planning required so the party doesn't get wiped out due to something out of their control.

Right, there can still be plans, just not as rigid. A situation with two routes isn't quite what I want either. That's not that different than having one route. I don't want there to be routes at all. As an example the boss might have a number of abilities it can use, but no fixed time or order for them. Maybe it has 5 TB's. It could use them all in a row as soon as the fight starts, or open with two and save 3 for the end. Having a limited number is one way to keep unwinnable edges cases out of the equation, like tankbusters happening for literally the entire fight. There are a lot of ways to do this like making TB's random and unlimited in number but giving them a cooldown between uses, etc.